Science Blog #8

Despite one of our group members being out sick and me not feeling so great either, our science lesson went way better than it did with the third graders. It helped that we did this as the last lesson of the day because the students were more accustomed to talking with us about their thought processes, and they really trusted us. We decided not to change many things about the experiment because we had a strong feeling that the lesson didn't go well before because of the group we were working with. They were all afraid to share their ideas and seemed intimidated by our presence in the classroom. We did add a prediction/results slip for them to fill out as pre- and post-assessment. We began with a video of parachuting, which they really enjoyed. Then, we had them make their first parachutes. We tested them, using an online timer, and wrote down the three test times. Since we were using an online timer, we let the students do the timing. We found this to be way more user friendly than the stop watches we used before, mostly because those buttons are way more difficult than a mouse for their little fingers. I think this helped reinforce the relationship between the time and how fast the parachutes fell. We then let them change one thing about their parachute and explained that this is the way real scientists test things. They changed one thing each and made a prediction on their slips about how the times would change. They tested them again and wrote down the three times. I showed them individually, while Megan helped others with testing their new parachutes, how to find the average. They did really well with this, and they even understood the importance of finding an average. They then had to write down what the results were on their slip. Did it fall faster? slower? etc.

The students that finished fastest were allowed to keep changing things. It was interesting to note that after they made that one change, we told them they could keep playing with their parachutes and could do whatever they wanted with them, and they kept changing one thing at a time and testing the parachute afterward. I think they really grasped the idea of how scientists tests things and having a control group (though we didn't talk about what a control group was, they understood the idea). Allowing the students to keep working was a great way to differentiate for the students who needed more of a challenge to keep experimenting while allowing us to help the students who needed extra. They enjoyed it, too!

My only question is, how do we take this and make it work for an entire class? It worked well in small groups because we could be there to observe all of the students and help all of them at the same time. I am just wondering what I could do to make this work with the whole class without losing the individual attention.